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Information Overload

Scientists nowadays are concerned that misuse or overuse of communication technology can lead to information overload. The term “information overload” (also known as “infobesity”) was first introduced by Berthram Gross in his book “The Managing of Organizations” (1964) but it was in fact popularized by Alvin Tofler in his best-seller “Future Sock” (1970).

Decision makers have a given, fairly limited, processing capacity so if they receive more information than they can effectively process, it is likely to experience difficulty in discriminating between the useful and the useless information, in understanding an issue or making a decision. This will inevitably result in reduced quality of decision making, lower productivity, and often in high levels of employee stress both on the job and at home.

Even though there is not a real solution how to stop information overload, the professionals from a San Jose Certified Translation Services mention a few things that can be done to possibly reduce it.

As a recipient, you often have some level of control over the number and types of messages you receive. For example, most e-mail systems usually offer good filtering and tagging options that can automatically sort incoming messages based on preset criteria. So using this feature you can isolate high-priority messages that deserve your attention and disregard or spend less time on the information that is not important. Another advice, added by the professionals from a Miami German Translation Services is, to spend less time on interrupting devices such as smartphones or tablets and to be wary of subscribing to too many blog feeds, Twitter follows, and other sources of recurring messages.

It is bad to undercommunicate nowadays, but sending unnecessary messages or sending a message to the wrong people is almost as bad. As a sender, you can help reduce information overload by making sure you don’t send unnecessary messages. Moreover, if you send messages that are not urgent or crucial, it is good to let people know this, to give them the option to prioritize. Moreover, since most communication systems let you mark messages as urgent, the advice of the Marketing Analysts French Translation Services in Washington D.C. is to use this feature only when it is truly needed. Sending too many messages marked as “urgent” that do not really need immediate attention and actions, will lead to annoyance and anxiety.

In conclusion, we may say that information overload is an increasing problem nowadays, and that those that learn how to deal with it effectively will have a major advantage in the next few years.